One day, a delegation of the clergy appealed to Catherine II with a request. Priests said that at one time Peter the Great removed the church bells for melting into guns, promising to return them, but did not fulfill the promise. The officials of the church believed that Catherine now had to fulfill what the emperor had promised.

Surprised, the queen asked if the clergy had a correspondence with Peter I himself. “Yes,” the applicants gladly answered, “we have a petition to the Tsar.”

The document was handed over to Catherine and she read a resolution in which Peter offered his intimate organ in response.

After getting acquainted with the verdict, the Empress asked to give her a pen and ink and with her royal hand wrote: "And I, as a woman, can not even offer this."